Recovery strategies

What if your PfP data gets corrupted or you simply don't have access to your device? No reason to reset your passwords.

Recovering generated passwords without backup

Even if all PfP data is lost and you are starting from scratch, most of the time you will be able to recover your generated passwords from memory. The important parts of the password generation are:

Your master password

Website name

Your user name

Password revision if any

Go to the website in question and create a new generated password for the user name which you hopefully remember. Same password should be generated and you will be able to log in. Not working? Maybe this website requires unusual password generation settings, e.g. no special characters.

You can restore your backup on the All Passwords page as well, using the middle icon in the upper icon row. All your passwords (both generated and stored) as well as the corresponding notes will be restored then. It will work on any PfP installation or even online as long as the backup was created with the same master password as the one you are using.

Ideally, you should create backups regularly and upload them to an online service where you can access them from anywhere. The backups are encrypted, so this service won’t know which websites you have accounts on.

Automatic backups

Sync functionality allows creating backups and uploading them to cloud storage automatically. Even if you use PfP on only one device, it’s a good idea to set up sync. If your PfP data is lost for some reason, you will always have a fresh backup this way. Just install PfP again, set the same master password you used before and sync it to the same account as before. All your data will be restored automatically.

Paper backups

You don’t trust digital copies? Yes, better safe than sorry. You can print the list of your passwords, so that you can recover them manually whenever needed:

Click PfP icon on any website

Enter your master password

Click “Show all passwords”

Click the print icon (the right-most icon in the upper icon row)

You will get a piece of paper sufficient to recover any of your generated passwords easily. It will also contain recovery codes for stored passwords, which you can use instead of the actual password when re-creating stored passwords. None of that information can be used without knowing your master password, but obviously website and user names cannot be encrypted.

You can also check “Show notes” and “Show passwords” if you want notes or actual passwords to be visible on the paper backup. If you choose to print your passwords, make sure that your paper backup never gets into the wrong hands!